Judges should continue to allow expert testimony from social scientists on the general reliability of eyewitness testimony, so that jurors are informed about the strengths and weaknesses of eyewitness testimony as a practice. Family weapons were used to kill the victims in the Murdaugh case, prosecutor says Prosecutor Creighton Waters speaks during closing arguments on Wednesday, March 1. Ernest Saunders, along with three other men, were part of the Guinness Four who were accused of being involved in ascheme to fraudulently increasethe price of Guinness shares. The case shed renewed light on the country's treatment of women, with a growing number of female Iranians choosing to flout the Sharia-based law to wear the hijab. Chester Weger was convicted in 1961 of the notorious Starved Rock Murders, in which three women were brutally killed and their bodies left in a park located in LaSalle County, Illinois about two hours southwest of Chicago. Pictured: Protestors take part in an anti-Iran demonstration on December 24, 2022 in Istanbul, Turkey, Women burned their headscarves in Kurdish-controlled north-east Syria in September 2022. 22 Edwin M. Borchard, Convicting the Innocent: Sixty-Five Actual Errors of Criminal Justice (New York: Garden City Publishing Company, Inc., 1932). While 30+ years of research is too much to summarize in a few paragraphs, we will outline the general problems with eyewitness testimony as well as some of them more major research that has been performed on the subject. 5 Brewer & Treyens, Role of Schemata in Memory for Places, Cognitive Psychology 13.2 (1981). He did it and was fortunate not to be sentenced to death in that era. I can vouch for the truth of his observations, having been involved in several cases dealing with witness misidentifications while representing both plaintiffs and defendants. It is used to establish facts in a criminal investigation or prosecution. In Manson, the Supreme Court highlighted reliability as the linchpin in determining the admissibility of identification testimony and adopted a totality of the circumstances test to assess reliability in this context.10 Eyewitness misidentifications are known to have played a role in 70 percent of the 349 wrongful convictions that have been overturned based on DNA evidence (so far). Even though no connection between Leiterman and Ruelas was ever established, the prosecution theorized that all three must have been together after midnight at the murder scene in 1969, with the preschooler bleeding on the victim for some unknown reason while Leiterman killed her. Recently, up to 400 female pupils from around 30 schools were subjected to poisoning attacks in what is believed to be an attempt to stop them getting an education. Many more sit in prisons who have not had the opportunity to have their cases re-investigated or samples re-tested. 26 The Innocence Project, DNA Exoneree Case Profiles,. Pregnant), Left and got about 1-2 blocks away and saw a man running west, away from downtown, it was her neighbor Flowers, Clemy pointed it out to Roy but Roy did not recognize him, Couldnt remember his clothes or shoes, did not describe seeing blood on him, Latarsha, Clemys cousin, remains convinced that Clemy made up the story because she felt pressured by law enforcement and because she might be able to get money Latarsha was also taken by the police at 19 to be asked questions and Johnson implied that she might get some of the reward money (30k) if she corroborated, Saw a man running across the street 1-2 blocks away that day of the murders, he was alone (not with Clemy) and it was earlier in the morning and when he was with Clemy later, they did not see anybody running, Law enforcement came and found Roy and he ended up giving a statement to John Johnson, Was shown Flowers picture (school picture) ONLY Flowers asked if that was the person Roy saw running Roy said no and John Johnson pushed Roy that it was Flowers and that Clemy was with him when it happened eventually Roy said he broke down and agreed to the story because he wanted to get out of there (he was afraid of Johnson), After that, Johnson recorded Clemy telling her story of seeing Flowers running away from downtown. 'And that's why peaceful protests ended up becoming violent - because of the foreign intervention. Until he was released on parole, the 81-year-old Weger ranked as the second longest-held inmate in Illinois prison system. Police lineups have evolved over time, but some states still need to catch up. In a recent review of the literature, the authors reported across 15 experiments, suspect identifications made with high confidence were, on average, 97 percent accurate! 10 Manson v. Brathwaite, 432 U.S. 98, 114 (1977). Prior to admitting eyewitness testimony, judges should make inquiries into the reliability of the eyewitness, looking for any indications of unreliability. Who can help student-athletes cash in? To do this we will link your MailOnline account with your Facebook account. The subjects who had been asked the leading question were much more likely to choose the slideshow with the yield sign, since their memories had been tampered by the question asked earlier.4 Many studies have since corroborated the findings of Loftus, such as another experiment, where the same effect was reproduced using television screens, and then seeing the effects between the different participants.5 Studies like these have demonstrated the fickle nature of memory, and how details can be changed without the witness really even recognizing it. Hale is an Emmy-nominated executive producer for several true-crime documentaries highlighting wrongful convictions. Videotaping allows for review of eyewitness testimony later on in the trial if the reliability of eyewitness testimony is called into question. 25 A. G. Goldstein, J. E. Chance, and G. R. Schneller, Frequency of Eyewitness Identification in Criminal Cases: A Survey of Prosecutors, 27(1) Bulletin of the Psychonomic Society: 71, 73 (January 1989). Not so with eyewitness memory. Prosecutors, though, have no murder weapon, bloody clothes or eyewitnesses, leaving them to build their case about Murdaugh's murky timeline of his whereabouts when the crime happened in 2021 . Videos circulating on Twitter appeared to show dozens of UN diplomats walking out as he started to speak. Well ask you to confirm this for your first post to Facebook. To do this, proper testing protocols that reduce chances of contamination need to be followed. According to the trial transcript, most of the eyewitnesses testified to having been positive when they picked Grant out of the lineup. After killing the officer, the shooter fled the scene and a high-speed car chase ensued. Guidance can help jurors who might not know what to make of conflicting testimony. Abcarian: Mask mandates? Expert witnesses are often instructed in cases where expert evidence is necessary to enable the court to understand specific issues, such as capacity, intent, causation etc. Perhaps one of the most striking examples of the flaws in eyewitness testimony is the case of Jerry Miller, who was convicted of rape, robbery and kidnapping in 1982. Yet, based on, among other things, this powerful purported eyewitness evidence, Heidelberg was convicted. Thanks to the work of the Innocence Project of Texas, new DNA testing on biological material collected from underneath the victims fingernails cleared Grant and implicated another man, Jermarico Carter, who police said confessed to the killing. Dan tries to find out more about Mustafa . The nearly simultaneous analyses of evidence from these three cases in the same crime lab in 2002a reunion, of sorts, among Mixer, Ruelas and Leiterman, who were ostensibly last together on the night of the murder in 1969was either an incredible coincidence or the Mixer evidence was contaminated with DNA from both Leiterman and Ruelas. 14 Manson, 432 U.S. 98, 12526 (Marshall, J., dissenting). Women in Iran have all the necessary, required freedoms within the framework of the law,' he added. 'In Iran we had an incident. The witnesses trial testimony reveals a simple explanation for these high-confidence errors: All of the eyewitnesses received confirmatory feedback following their identification of Grant. John Wixted is a Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, San Diego. Discover world-changing science. Neighbors told arriving firefighters that they had heard a thunderous crash at about the same time as the blaze is believed to have begun. Once a suspect has established that he was the victim of suggestiveness, a pretrial hearing will be held in which the full range of reasons for possible misidentification are examined. Miller was placed in a lineup and one of the parking lot attendants positively identified Miller; the other parking lot attendant tentatively identified him. Two police officers thought the sketch resembled Miller, a man they had questioned a few days earlier. According to the prosecution on the day of the murder, at around 7 am, Flowers walked from his home on the West side of town all the way to a sewing factory parking lot on the East side of town, crossing Highway 51, one of the towns largest streets, while doing so. A judge can review the footage to see if claims of witness tampering are true, or if the witness shows significant doubt while identifying the suspect. She unsuccessfully appealed against her conviction in 2000. His doctors maintained that he was suffering from pre-senile dementia, and he couldnt remember three numbers backwards or the name of the US president. A neurologist also claimed that Saunders brain was small for a man his age and showed evidence of shrinking. Consider the important, and often overlooked, distinction between malleability and reliability. According to the same theory, 33 years later, in 2002, in an almost inconceivable coincidence, evidence samples from Mixer, Ruelas and Leiterman just happened to be together again in the Michigan State Police Laboratory. Albright explains that witness misidentifications are essentially failures of visual perception (seeing things accurately) or failures of memory (lack of precision in storage and recall). Kendall Taggart BuzzFeed News Reporter It does make sure that photos in a lineup resemble one another.) Farm Heroes Saga, the #4 Game on iTunes. Warmer storms could cause problems, Column: Supreme Court conservatives may want to block student loan forgiveness. Compared to administrators conducting double-blind lineups, these informed administrators are more likely to ask witnesses about the suspect and smile when witnesses are looking at the suspect rather than at another person in the lineup. Thus, Chester was charged with three separate felonies as a way to overwhelm him and break him down. 23 United States v. Wade, 388 U.S. 230, 288 (1967). Juries should also be informed as to the manner of the identification, the eyewitnesss confidence and other factors that might influence reliability. Press Esc to cancel. During Wednesday's interview with CNN, Amirabdollahian accused western media outlets of encouraging violent protests in his country. Arnold Schwarzenegger vetoed legislation that, among other things, would have set up a task force to examine eyewitness testimony and establish voluntary guidelines to ensure that it was accurate. Marilyn Stowe instructed a pathologist to review the medical notes of both infants. Eyewitness testimony can hold a lot of weight with jurors. The detective also admitted making a similar comment to at least one other witness. cases where eyewitnesses were rightammo donation to ukraine. The FBI estimates that 521,196 of these arrests were for violent crimes.24 Accurate data on the number of crimes observed by eyewitnesses are not available. EvgeniyShkolenko/iStock via Getty Images Plus, Chicago Sun-Times/Chicago Daily News/Chicago History Museum via Getty Images, Scientific best practices for conducting eyewitness lineups, smile when witnesses are looking at the suspect, no longer tell the difference between accurate and mistaken eyewitnesses, alter witnesses memories of the original crime, less able to recognize the actual perpetrator, is informative regarding the eyewitnesss accuracy, 25 states have adopted these core procedural reforms, Committee Member - MNF Research Advisory Committee, PhD Scholarship - Uncle Isaac Brown Indigenous Scholarship. circuit court, the 29-year-old was convicted of a rape that he did not commit and was sentenced to five life sentences. The shooter had borrowed Heidelbergs car, and when Heidelberg went to retrieve his car later that night he was arrested by officers at the scene. My Blog cases where eyewitnesses were right. I believe the remaining 25 states should act swiftly to prevent additional miscarriages of justice. At the time of his release, Jerry Miller had served over 26 years in prison for a crime he did not commit. The testimony of an eyewitness could make up for many shortcomings in a case, such as the lack of any actual physical evidence. In 2009, he was charged with assaulting 12 women. Do you want to automatically post your MailOnline comments to your Facebook Timeline? 'Do you ask other countries? Standardized instructions regarding best practices should be given, including such tips as the importance of minimizing contact between witnesses at the scene, and how gathering eyewitness testimony as early as possible tends to increase its accuracy. The processes at play in Lydell Grants case are predictable and unfortunately common. The other individuals placed in a lineup with the suspect (known as fillers) are supposed to reasonably resemble the suspect in terms of age, height and weight so that the suspect does not stand out. The parking lot attendants provided a description of the driver to a police sketch artist and the sketch was published in a daily police bulletin. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. Hossein Amirabdollahian told the host 'this is not the way to conduct an interview' after he insisting women in Iran had 'all the necessary, required freedoms' and accused Western media of fueling protests there. In one clip an unidentified Iranian woman can be heard saying: 'They are without shame and should be embarrassed. Confidence collected at the time of an identification during a double-blind lineup procedure is informative regarding the eyewitnesss accuracy. . In Perry v. New Hampshire, the Supreme Court barred the defendant from challenging the eyewitness testimony proffered by the state, even though the circumstances surrounding the eyewitnesss identification of the defendant were decidedly suggestive. Once this fact is appreciated, then proper testing protocols can be put in place to minimize the likelihood that the original memory trace is contaminated. Document Witness Confidence and Videotape Witness Identifications. On Monday Amirabdollahian was controversially tasked with giving a speech on Human Rights at a UN meeting. was a video tape, and his presence and the time of the event were confirmed by two athletic directors, his coach, and members of the opposing team. The modern test for the admissibility of eyewitness testimony at a criminal trial under the Due Process Clause was established by the U.S. Supreme Court in Manson v. Brathwaite in 1977. The involvement of expert witnesses in famous expert witness cases often leads to changes in how expert evidence is formulated and the effect it may have on the outcome of the proceedings. Today, he remains in prison. Most recently, in 2012, the Supreme Court clarified that the Due Process Clause does not require judges to assess the reliability of eyewitness identifications made under suggestive circumstances when the circumstances are not created by law enforcement officials.15 In other words, in cases where the proffered identification does not result from suggestive police procedure, the judge need not consider whether the identification also passes the second step of the Manson test. Some elements include the following: First, and most important of all, because the test itself contaminates memory, only the initial memory test provides uncontaminated results. This case raised important questions about the reliability of expert evidence. The attendants were also able to have a brief conversation with the driver before he fled on foot. But if the six eyewitnesses chose Lydell Grant from the lineup only because they were cued to do so by the case detective, why were they so confident in their identifications? Witnesses arent able to tell whether their testimony was influenced in this way. What facts gave rise to the belief that Leiterman may have been wrongfully convicted based on contaminated evidence? For example, in cases where a mental disorder is an issue, the evidence of a psychiatrist may influence the conduct of legal proceedings, it may help to adduce medical evidence relevant to trial and may be the deciding factor between imprisonment and mental health treatment. Such behaviors are often inadvertent; neither lineup administrators nor eyewitnesses may be consciously aware that theyre happening. Published: 00:56 EST, 2 March 2023 | Updated: 01:01 EST, 2 March 2023. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. She was sentenced to life in prison. Gov. It gathered more than 100 signatures from prominent lawmakers, human rights campaigners and celebrities. What it means is that the malleability of memory can harm reliability. This decision attracted intense media attention and was seen to be a controversial decision due to the nature and severity of his offences. An Iranian girl passed away and we were all very sorry about that. They are child killers.'. Following criticism of the decision, the high court ordered the parole board to re-examine Worboys case. Create your free account or Sign in to continue. As with DNA evidence, eyewitness evidence needs to be safeguarded against contamination. They were then asked a leading question about how fast the car was going when it passed the yield sign. In an effort to overwhelm Chester and break him down, he was placed in a lineup regarding two incidents that took place in 1959 in a nearby State Park called Deer Park, one of which was that rape case and the other was a purse snatching. Instead, they asked that the six eyewitnesses who originally testified against Grant respond to his claims of innocence. Do you ask other countries who are in our region but are allies of the United States the same kinds of questions that you're asking me about the women's hijab? The reliability of these alleged identifications was suspect, since the officers would have had only a fraction of a second to observe the driver whizz by them at a high rate of speed at night. In the United States, more than 300 exonerations have resulted from postconviction DNA testing since 1989.26 According to the Innocence Project, at least one mistaken eyewitness identification was present in almost three-quarters of DNA exonerations.27 In many of these cases, eyewitness identification played a significant evidentiary role, and almost without exception, the eyewitnesses who testified expressed complete confidence that they had chosen the perpetrator. In Winona, Mississippi on July 16, 1996, four people were shot and killed at Tardy furniture store. Renowned Expert witnesses include doctors, psychologists, psychiatrists, social workers, and other professionals who are instructed to give expert opinions in legal proceedings. One of my clients, Cleve Heidelberg, was convicted in 1970 of killing a Peoria County, Ill., sheriffs deputy who was responding to a call about an armed robbery at a drive-in movie theatre. At his criminal trial, both parking lot attendants identified Miller as the perpetrator. Los Angeles, Review: A reimagined Secret Garden fails to flower anew at the Ahmanson Theatre, Editorial: Ousting L.A. Countys chief probation officer isnt enough. Eyewitness Testimony: Recommended Practices, Eyewitness testimony continues to be commonplace in law enforcement and trials. If the contaminated evidence is relied on to establish guilt versus innocence at a trial, the risk of a wrongful conviction is high. Police in some California counties use some of the methods recommended by the New Jersey court and by the California Commission on the Fair Administration of Justice. Juries are particularly prone to being swayed by eyewitness testimony, as evidenced in the Curtis Flowers case. Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information, Editorial: He spent 38 years in prison for a crime he didnt commit. Chester denied having anything to do with these other crimes but was identified by the victims based on these suggestive procedures. Years later, in 1967, the U.S. Supreme Court highlighted the danger of erroneous eyewitness identification in United States v. Wade, stating, The vagaries of eyewitness identification are well-known; the annals of criminal law are rife with instances of mistaken identification.23 The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) estimates that U.S. law enforcement made 12,196,959 arrests in 2012. Gareth, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist, is the series editor of Best American Infographics and can be reached at garethideas AT gmail.com or Twitter@garethideas. The way to avoid these problems with eyewitness testimony is for police to adopt best practices based on the psychological research. Thirty Years of DNA Forensics: How DNA Has Revolutionized Criminal Investigations., See here: Innocence Project, Eyewitness misidentification, Crime in the United States 2012: Persons Arrested,. 13 See Timothy P. OToole & Giovanna Shay, Manson v. Brathwaite Revisited: Towards a New Rule of Decision for Due Process Challenges to Eyewitness Identification Procedures, 41 Val. Judges in California routinely talk to jurors about the possibility of misidentification, but their instructions arent as complete as those contemplated by the New Jersey court. The murder victims cold case evidence was there because the case had recently been reopened; the 1969 preschoolers DNA sample was there as part of an active murder investigation, and Leitermans DNA sample was there because he had recently been arrested for forging a prescription. 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In this case, the defendant was charged with first degree murder and the only evidence against him was the testimony of two eyewitnesses.
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